KALENDAR, a distribution of time, accommodated to the uses of life; or a table, or almanac, containing the order of days, weeks, months, feasts, &c. happening throughout the year. See TIME, MONTH, YEAR, &c.
It is called kalendar, from the word kalendæ, anciently wrote in large characters at the head of each month. See KALENDARS.
The days in calendars were originally divided into oddades, or eights; but afterwards, in imitation of the Jews, into hebdonades, or sevens; which custom, Scaliger observes, was not introduced among the Romans till after the time of Theodosius.
There are divers calendars, according to the different forms of the year, and distributions of time, established in different countries. Hence the Roman, the Jewish, the Persian, the Julian, the Gregorian, &c. calendars.
The ancient Roman calendar is given by Ricciolus, Struvius, Danet, and others; by which we see the order and number of the Roman holidays and work-days.
The three Christian calendars are given by Wolfius in his Elements of Chronology.
The Jewish calendar was fixed by rabbi Hillel about the year 360, from which time the days of their year may be reduced to those of the Julian calendar.
The Roman KALENDAR, owed its origin to Romulus; but it has undergone various reformations since his time. That legislator distributed time into several periods, for the use of the people under his command: but as he was much better versed in matters of war than of astronomy, he only divided the year into ten months, making it begin in the spring, on the first of March; imagining the sun made his course
Kalendar. thro' all the seasons in 304 days.
Romulus's kalendar was reformed by Numa, who added two months more, January and February; placing them before March: so that his year consisted of 355 days, and began on the first of January. He chose, however, in imitation of the Greeks, to make an intercalation of 45 days, which he divided into two parts; intercalating a month of 22 days at the end of each two years; and at the end of each two years more, another of 23 days; which month, thus interpolated, he called Marcedonius, or the intercalary February.
But these intercalations being ill observed by the pontiffs, to whom Numa committed the care of them, occasioned great disorders in the constitution of the year; which Cæsar, as sovereign pontiff, endeavoured to remedy. To this end, he made choice of Sosigenes, a celebrated astronomer of those times; who found, that the dispensation of time in the kalendar could never be settled on any sure footing, without having regard to the annual course of the sun. Accordingly, as the sun's yearly course is performed in 365 days six hours, he reduced the year to the same number of days: the years of this correction of the kalendar was a year of confusion; they being obliged, in order to swallow up the 65 five days that had been imprudently added, and which occasioned the confusion, to add two months besides the Marcedonius, which chanced to fall out that year; so that this year consisted of 15 months, or 445 days. This reformation was made in the year of Rome 708, 42 or 43 years before Christ.
The Roman kalendar, called also Julian kalendar, from its reformer Julius, is disposed into quadriennial periods; whereof the first three years, which he called communes, consist of 365 days; and the fourth, bisextile, of 366; by reason of the six hours, which in four years make a day, or somewhat less, for in 134 years an intercalary day is to be retrenched. On this account it was, that pope Gregory XIII. with the advice of Clavius and Ciaconius, appointed, that the hundredth year of each century should have no bisextile, excepting in each fourth century: that is, a subtraction is made of three bisextile days in the space of four centuries; by reason of the 11 minutes wanting in the six hours whereof the bisextile consists.
The reformation of the kalendar, or the new style, as we call it, commenced on the fourth of October 1582, when ten days were thrown out at once; so many having been introduced into the computation since the time of the council of Nice, in 325, by the defect of 11 minutes.
Julian Christian Kalendar, is that wherein the days of the week are determined by the letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, by means of the solar cycle; and the new and full moons, especially the paschal full moon, with the feast of Easter, and the other moveable feasts depending thereon, by means of golden numbers, rightly disposed through the Julian year. See CYCLE, and GOLDEN NUMBER.
In this kalendar, the vernal equinox is supposed to be fixed to the 21st day of March; and the cycle of 19 years, or the golden numbers, constantly to indicate the places of the new and full moons; yet both are erroneous. And hence arose a very great irregularity in
the time of Easter. To shew this error the more apparently, let us apply it to the year 1715. In this year, then, the vernal equinox falls on the tenth of March; and therefore comes too early by 11 days. The paschal full-moon falls on the 7th of April; and therefore too late, with regard to the cycle, by three days. Easter, therefore, which should have been on the 10th of April, was that year on the 17th. The error here lies only in the metempsychosis, or postposition of the moon, through the defect of the lunar cycle. If the full moon had fell on the 11th of March, Easter would have fallen on the 13th of March; and therefore the error arising from the anticipation of the equinox, would have exceedingly augmented that arising from the postposition. These errors, in course of time, were so multiplied, that the kalendar no longer exhibited any regular Easter. Pope Gregory XIII. therefore, by the advice of Aloysius Lilius, in 1582, threw 10 days out of the month of October, to restore the equinox to its place, viz. the 21st of March; and thus introduced the form of the Gregorian year, with such a provision, as that the equinox should be constantly kept to the 21st of March. The new moons and full moons, by advice of the same Lilius, were not to be indicated by golden numbers, but by epacts. The kalendar, however, was still retained in Britain, without this correction: whence there was a difference of 11 days between our time and that of our neighbours. But by 24 Geo. II. c. 23. the Gregorian computation is established here, and accordingly took place in 1752.
Gregorian Kalendar, is that which, by means of epacts, rightly disposed thro' the several months, determines the new and full moons, and the time of Easter, with the moveable feasts depending thereon, in the Gregorian year.
The Gregorian kalendar, therefore, differs from the Julian, both in the form of the year, and in that epacts are substituted in lieu of golden numbers: for the use and disposition whereof, see EPACT, in the APPENDIX.
Though the Gregorian kalendar be preferable to the Julian, yet it is not without its defects (perhaps, as Tycho Brahe and Cassini imagine, it is impossible ever to bring the thing to a perfect justness.) For, first, the Gregorian intercalation does not hinder, but that the equinox sometimes succeeds the 21st of March, as far as the 23d; and sometimes anticipates it, falling on the 19th; and the full moon, which falls on the 20th of March, is sometimes the paschal; yet not so accounted by the Gregorians. On the other hand, the Gregorians account the full moon of the 22d of March, the paschal; which yet, falling before the equinox, is not paschal. In the first case, therefore, Easter is celebrated in an irregular month; in the latter, there are two Easters in the same ecclesiastical year. In like manner, the cyclical computation being founded on mean full-moons, which yet may precede or follow the true ones by some hours, the paschal full-moon may fall on Saturday, which is yet referred by the cycle to Sunday: whence, in the first case, Easter is celebrated eight days later than it should be; in the other, it is celebrated on the very day of the full moon, with the Jews and Quartodeciman heretics; contrary to the decree of the council of Nice. Sealiger and Calvisius shew other faults in the Gregorian kalendar, arising from the negli-
Kalendar. negligence and inadvertency of the authors: yet is this kalendar adhered to by the Romanists throughout Europe, &c. and used wherever the Roman breviary is used.